A world champion’s drive.
That’s Sébastien Ogier view on Elfyn Evans’ performance at Rally Estonia, as Evans outscored Ogier despite finishing behind him.
Evans led the championship by 11 points prior to round nine of 14, with victory in Greece moving Ogier 24 points closer, leaving him 37 adrift.
However despite finishing sixth and over two minutes behind rally winner Sami Pajari in Estonia, Evans’ championship lead grew over both Katsuta and Ogier to 25 and 38 respectively.
The key was Evans’ Super Sunday performance, as he took second in the standings and third on the powerstage to snare seven points, while Ogier only picked up four points for fourth in both.
With two championship points the difference between fifth (where Ogier finished) and sixth overall, Evans outscored his rival by a single point.
Assessing his own weekend, Ogier admitted “a few tenths” would have improved his weekend score, but heaped praise on Evans for the job he did.
Evans started two places ahead of Ogier in the running order on Friday, but scored more points
Ogier told DirtFish: “Fair play to Elfyn, he was strong this weekend. He was doing the job the championship leader needs to do to win championships.
“This weekend, from first on the road, achieving 15 points is a strong performance, so well done to him. We have to be honest with that.
“And on our side like I say, not being there for five years, it wasn’t that bad from my side, but I was missing just a little bit, just a few tenths today and I would have been satisfied from my weekend. But now I’m not unsatisfied either.
“It’s not positive for the championship, we are not managing to catch the points,” he continued. “I came here with a target of if I could catch four or five points to Elfyn would be my target basically, and now yeah we lose one point so it’s not catastrophic.
“Now we have to go to Finland of course with a much higher target – a rally which I’ve been competing the last two years so for sure I have to target higher than what I was targeting here this weekend and it should be hopefully possible.”
Evans was flattered by Ogier’s appraisal.
“That’s very kind of him,” Evans told DirtFish. “It’s always a difficult position when you’re opening the road like that.
“You feel like you’re doing what you can. You don’t feel like you’re doing a bad job, but when you come and see the guys taking 15 seconds off you, it’s natural that you’re asking questions.
“It’s hard to feel good about that somehow, but I think it was the reality of the conditions this weekend, unfortunately. So that’s all you can do. You know you can do your best and that’s it.”
